The IVY League Tournament

[Hall2012]

I apologize if this was discussed somewhere in another thread, but starting next year the Ivy League will adopt a conference tournament to determine its automatic bid just like every other conference. It will be a 4 team tournament held at The Palestra.

I love that its at The Palestra- one of the best places to watch a basketball game, but I'm a little disappointed overall as the league previously had the best way of determining its auto bid winner.

[MUPanther]

FS1 picked up the boardcast rights for this year's tie- breaker.

Let's hope they get the boardcast rights. It's a Saturday and Sunday, so FS1 can have the room.

[stever20]

saw on the realignment board someone with a great reason why the Ivy is doing this. So a team tied for 1st would be guaranteed to get into the NIT should they lose. Like last year Yale was in that boat and lost.

[SCS]

I don't like this move by the Ivy, I think part of the reason the Ivy has gone really well in the tourney lately (besides its recruiting really picking up) is that they ensure the best team makes it into the tournament. A lot of smaller conferences would be wise to do the same if they want to have the best chance at pulling the upset even if fans of those conference teams might not like it.

[CoachK]

I've heard coaches were really behind it, and here is an interesting reason why.

The weird way Ivy League does their schedule, you play your travel partner first, twice. So if you are Brown, you start with Yale, which means you are probably 0-2. At that point, your season is essentially over. Now let's say you go on the road the next week and go 1-1. Now you are 1-3, and you are really done. At that point, it is very hard to keep your players engaged for the next 6 weeks. In recent years, you can replace Brown with Dartmouth (who partners with Harvard) as well.

But in general, and team that gets off to a slow start (maybe injuries involved?) is essentially out of it early. With the top 4 teams, now as many as 6 or even 7 teams are probably still in the running with 2 weeks to go. Probably helps attendance as well, as a 5th place team fighting for a playoff spot is a much more interesting draw.

[SCS]

I dont really understand why that's a problem. The Ivy League is only scheduling 14 conference games so they should be able to make one of those games at the beginning of the season and another at the end by just starting their conference schedule earlier when its already hard for mid-majors to get OOC games.